


The Right Stuff

by archwrites (Arch)



Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Airplanes, Cunnilingus, F/M, Memory Loss, POV James "Rhodey" Rhodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:21:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6925735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arch/pseuds/archwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Rhodes and Carol Danvers have a lot in common, even besides the superhero stuff. Not all of it is sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Stuff

**Author's Note:**

> This began as a Tumblr fic and then ballooned into one version of how I envisioned Carol and Rhodey getting together in the MCU. The memory loss comes from Volume I of the comics, but nothing else in this fic is meant to be comics canon.
> 
> Also: I am pretty obviously TOTALLY UNFAMILIAR with military culture and airplane maintenance. I did some basic googling, but I apologize for any glaring errors.
> 
> Many thanks to the ever-fantastic @intosnarkness for the beta.

February in the Rockies means snow, and lots of it. Jim's emerged from his day-long meeting (he's still thinking about the whispered rumors of alien contact) to discover another three inches on his car, with snow still falling. He sighs and pulls out his wholly inadequate scraper. 

"Need some help?"

He turns to see a woman in uniform holding up the king of ice scrapers. She's a fellow colonel, he sees, and then he realizes he ought to know her name. (Davis? No.) He grins at her. "Thanks," he says, tipping her a salute. 

"No problem," she says, returning the gesture. She crunches over and starts clearing the passenger side of his car. "You're Colonel Rhodes, right?"

"Yeah," he says. He still can't remember her name. "And you're... Colonel Daniels?"

"Danvers," she says. Her eyes are very, very blue. "Carol Danvers. And I'm retiring next week."

"Call me Jim," he tells her, on sudden impulse, and she gives him a dazzling smile.

* * *

Jim has never dated another pilot. Carol makes him wonder what he's been missing out on, though. She's so... _strong_. If fraternization always produces sex this hot, no wonder it's frowned upon. Nobody would ever get anything done.

But Carol is special. All pilots are driven, but as a result most of them are also assholes. Carol isn't; she just hates bullies and loves flying. Or talking about flying. Or being in the general vicinity of an airplane. 

They spend one Sunday in March in a little private hangar just off base, Carol doing maintenance on her little Cessna while Jim hands her tools. They've been spending every spare moment together over the past few weeks. He owes calls to his family, to Tony, to everyone in his life who isn't Carol. But she's all-consuming.

He's sitting on the ground, staring at her breasts and wondering whether he could hold her up against the plane and still get the right leverage, when she says, "What can you tell me about the Avengers Initiative?"

He drops the wrench he's holding. It hits the ground with a loud clang. "Uh," he says. "I don't -- I'm not --"

She looks down at him and laughs. "Okay," she says. But then she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, like she's gathering her courage. When she opens her eyes again, her jaw is set: determined. She looks kind of heroic, actually. His heart throbs. 

"I need to show you something," she tells him.

He leans forward. 

She lifts off the ground, flies -- flies! -- up in a quick loop around the hangar, picks up the plane like they're in a _cartoon_ , sets it down gently, and drops lightly to stand astride his legs, looking like some kind of Norse goddess. 

"Oh my god," he says. 

Carol raises her eyebrows. "Is that it?"

Jim starts laughing. "I am so turned on right now, you have no idea."

She glances down, and a smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. "I have some idea," she says, unbuttoning her pants, and when she pushes down pants and underwear together he can see the dampness of her panties.

"Come here, Colonel," he murmurs, reaching for her. He kisses across her thigh, presses his open mouth at the crease of her groin, noses at the top of her slit. She's slick and wet as he licks into her, long and slow, and she droops forward to lean against the plane. He loves this: the tangy sweet-salty taste of her, the way she grinds against him, the strength of her legs and the thickness of her hard clit. She comes when he sucks on it, trying to stifle her cries but failing, and he's so hard he thinks he might burst. 

"Jim," she says finally, "get up here and fuck me."

So he does, one hand braced next to hers on the plane as he slides easily into her. She doesn't even try to be quiet this time, but neither does he, and the plane creaks and rocks with every thrust anyway. It takes every ounce of his considerable self-control to fuck her through one orgasm to another before he finally comes so hard he thinks he might never be able to get it up again. 

He pulls her with him to the ground and lies down on his back with her on top of him, still joined until he softens enough to slide out. The air is too cold after her heat, but he doesn't want this moment to end.

He slides a hand up to cup Carol's breast. "Jesus," he says finally. "Carol. That was..."

"I know," she says, and her voice is dazed. "Should've known that's the effect it would have on you, War Machine," she adds a few minutes later. 

She's going to fall asleep, he can tell. She's well-fucked and warm, but he's lying on a thin blanket on cold concrete and his dick has gone beyond soft to actually trying to climb back up into his body. "Hey, beautiful, we gotta get up," he says, squeezing her breast. 

"Nnnn," she says, wriggling against him. It feels so good that he wishes his dick had another round in it, but at this point the throb he feels is itself a heroic effort. 

Then they hear voices. 

Carol is up in a flash. There are three or four men, and they're going to get an eyeful in about five seconds --

Carol grabs Jim and their clothes, yanks him to her chest, and shoots up to the dim corner of the hangar. They float there, silent and pantsless, until the men leave, and then they laugh until they cry.

* * *

Jim gets permission to take the suit out for training runs, and he and Carol train together. Her superpowers are pretty new, and she won't tell him how she got them. That's fine with him; he knows what it's like to be the one giving a thousand-yard stare in response to a question, so he stops asking them pretty quickly. She's _bulletproof_ , it turns out, and she can break atmo, and she shoots energy bolts from her fingertips. It's the coolest thing he's ever seen.

It's only a matter of time before he loses her to the Avengers, too. 

He's never questioned his place in the Air Force before. Like he's told Tony, he feels like he's part of something, and he knows that his fellow servicemen and -women have his back. Even when he had to fight to keep searching for Tony in Afghanistan, he appreciated being able to mobilize units to do so (he won that fight, after all). 

But his career really took off after he got hold of the War Machine suit. He kind of likes his increased role as Iron Patriot, actually, even though he still can't think of himself by that name. He likes being part of something greater than himself, he likes working to exert pressure from the inside to try to do the right thing, and he loves wearing the suit.

He loves it best when he's fighting next to Tony, though. And fighting with both Tony and Carol? For the first time, he thinks about leaving the Air Force to join another team.

He actually submits a request to his CO.

"Absolutely not," the general says. "Iron Patriot is far too important to national security to be relinquished to a band of vigilantes. Dismissed, Colonel."

Jim knows better than to protest. He salutes and does not run away, just like he doesn't hide in the gym, just like he isn't pretending that the punching bag is the general's smug, mustachioed face. After an hour, he feels no better, so he files what counts as a flight plan for the Iron Patriot suit and goes flying.

He's doing Mach 3 over the Utah salt flats when the suit's radar picks up an object flying in a zigzag pattern in his general direction. He drops to the ground to wait.

"You seem pissed off," Carol says when she drops down in front of him.

"Yep," Jim replies.

She nods. "Okay. Wanna spar?"

Jim puts the faceplate back so she can feel the full impact of his stare. "No, Carol, I do not want to spar."

She takes a step forward and frowns, searching his face. "You always want --"

"I don't want to spar! I don't want to fight! I want --" He cuts himself off abruptly. Carol doesn't do feelings; she's made that abundantly clear. But what he wants is to crawl into her arms and be soothed, be told that he matters and that she won't leave him. And that is a bad sign, because Carol has never said anything about permanence and he's teetering on the edge of love.

"When are you going to join the Avengers?" he asks instead.

She turns pink. "I'm not -- my answer isn't due for --"

"Carol. They need you, and you want this. When?"

"As soon as I can get to New York," she says. "I guess your friend Tony Stark is putting all of us up. Pepper Potts sent me an email saying that Tony would foot the bill for the move; all I have to do is show up with the stuff I can't live without for three to five days."

Jim nods, then swallows, then nods again. "Come fly with me," he says, holding out his arms. She steps into them, and before he snaps his faceplate down, he kisses her. "You'll make a great Avenger, Colonel Danvers."

* * *

They try to stay together after she moves to New York, but soon days pass without their speaking, and the new spark they're trying to kindle simply dies out.

The years pass, and Jim stays in the Air Force to keep control of the suit. He's not an Avenger, but he gets called in sometimes. After a while, he starts feeling like he can have two teams, even if he's not fully part of either anymore.

Then Tony calls to tell him that Carol has lost her memories.

He sees her again soon after, and the blankness of her regard hurts like a lance in his gut. Her hair is longer than it was when they were together; otherwise, she looks almost exactly the same, and he's overwhelmed with vivid and long-treasured recollections. Carol laughing in the sunlight, Carol dropping down from above him in flight and clinging to his back, Carol warm and sleek in his arms. He reaches out to hug her, and then he drops his arms, embarrassed.

"Colonel Rhodes," she says, and he sees a spark of interest as she looks him up and down. No one would have told her that they ever dated because no one but the two of them ever knew.

"You used to call me Jim," he tells her, and she smiles.

* * *

"How long were we together?" she asks over dessert.

"Three months," he says.

She looks up at him over her cherry pie, eyebrows high with surprise. "Is that all?" she asks. "The way you…" She closes her mouth abruptly.

There's a long pause while Jim folds his napkin and leans back in his chair. "Pretty obvious, huh?" he says, finally, his mouth twisting in a wry smile.

"I'm not the same person I was then," Carol tells him, and her eyes are kind.

"I know," he replies. He takes a sip of water. "I… I never told you, then. That I was in love with you."

"I probably didn't give you much of a chance," she says. "I'm not a romantic, Jim. I like flying and punching things, and even now the thought of a long-term relationship makes me antsy."

Jim rolls his eyes at her. "What makes you think I'm that much different?"

She tilts her head, considering. "You _are_ noticeably single. And a superhero."

"We had interests in common," he says dryly.

She leans back and eyes him. "I bet we did," she says. She drops her eyelashes and then smiles wickedly at him. "Want to come back to my place and see whether we still do?"

"Hell, yes," he manages, and then he flags down the server for the check.


End file.
